In Prose
Health…
is elusive in its definition and yet something to strive for. An ideal, a notion, a practice. All of it and still more. A word of Germanic origin health, a word related to whole; entire, unbroken, piece-ful, peaceful. Lacking disease or illness, full of wellness, the state of good health as a process, not a static state. A steady state, a foundation, a ground state, a starting place, a destination, an action, a decision, a frustration, a dedication. Wholebody, wholehearted, whole some.
It is the laughter drifting across the breeze on summer nights and the hauling of wood for fireplace in winters maw. It is the grandmother, bending down to garden, to play, to be. It is the Jordan’s flying, the Key’s singing, the Gorman’s speaking. It is the time traveling naps and the moan evoking snacks and the insight revealing asks. It is the fathers cooking and cleaning, the mothers breadwinning. It is the mothers nurturing and the fathers succeeding. It is the babies playing and the teenagers becoming. It is the heat wrenching, warming, throbbing specificity of you and of me. It is the mind blowing, boggling, bending interconnectivity of us. It is diversity and hope with its many feathers. It is the endurance, integration, perseverance. It is the pieces of a puzzle spanning languages of mind, body, soul, culture, latitude, longitude, biome, ethnosphere, biosphere. It is belonging, courage, wholeness, bravery, heartache, failure – fathomless and intimately known. It is a piece metaphysical in its complexity, and tangible in its everyday content.
It is the deep breaths first thing in the morning after sound sleep. It is the ability for movement; cycling, swaggering, wiggling, ambling, It is dreaming of connection, light, dark, love, loss, the balance of life. It is vibrant vegetables with their alchemical dirt clinging to them transformed into meals among friends to fibers of the body. It is pieces of larger wholes strung together.
Health is the movements toward wholeness and meaning, however that beauty looks for you.
